US Senate Bill Introduced to Prohibit Question on Citizenship in 2020 US Census

The following is a message from Jan Meisels Allen, Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee:

A bill has been introduced in the United States Senate which would prohibit the recently added question on citizenship to be placed on the 2020 US Census. The bill, S 2580, authored by Senator Menendez (D-NJ) has 15 co-sponsors-all Democrats. The title of the bill is “Every Person Counts Act”. The bill specifically proposes in Section 141(a) of title 13 of the United States Code, by inserting,” as necessary, except that the Secretary may not include any question or otherwise elicit any information regarding United States citizenship or immigration status”.

The US Constitution has required a decennial census since 1790. Earlier this year, at the e request of the Justice Department, the Secretary of Commerce added a question on citizenship based on their assumption it will “help enforce” the Voting Rights Act . Between 1820 and 1950 the US Census asked a question about citizenship. Since the 1950 census no citizenship question has been included in the decennial census. The question will be the same as the one asked in the annual American Community Survey. Since 1790 the US census has counted both citizens and non-citizens This was added late in the sole testing stage so it will probably will not be included in the Rhode Island end-to-end survey.

There are several states which have filed suit against the Administration over the new question. For back ground information see the IAJGS Records Access Alert .

Because it results in undercounts. Immigrant and minority communities are already undercounted in the Census and this will make it worse. Even people who *are* here legally get nervous when asked questions about their status; immigration is a painstaking, nerve-wracking process.

Regardless of anyone’s legal status, we need to know how many people are living here.

My guess would be that those senators and states are just fine with the idea that not everyone will be counted, and if “those people” choose to fail to answer the census all the better. Seems to me that this is a shortsighted view that does not acknowledge the relationship of the census numbers to the way Federal money is allocated.

It seems to me that they could get the same results if they would have the question “Date Naturalized” as it was on previous census. Then people could just ignore it if it didn’t pertain to them or they didn’t want to answer. Maybe areas of heavy immigration need to have drives to ensure people understand they do not have to answer questions that they feel are offensive. I’m sure this happened many times in the past as a study of census where your family members answered sometimes show blanks or differing answers. It would still allow for an accurate count of the persons living in an area.

Isn’t one of the primary reasons for the census to provide an accurate count of citizens for determining the number of representatives a state should have (apportionment). How does this work if the census doesn’t specifically count citizens?

No, representation is not determined by the number of citizens; it’s determined by the entire population, because that’s the way the constitution wrote it. (OK, unamended it wanted the number of free persons, minus Indians, plus 3/5 of other persons, but it was still on the basis of population not citizenship.)

It is unfortunate that certain people are doing everything they can think of to prevent the President from carrying out his duties under the Constitution. HE is the executive branch. The census bureau is part of the executive branch, and it seems to me that any delay in preparing for the 2020 count, will needlessly delay the enumeration itself.

These comments fascinate me. The word immigrant for example, where did illegal alien go? How do people who waited for years, and were admitted to citizenship (Shots, sponsors, swearing allegiance, etc) equate with someone who paid a drug cartel to smuggle them across the border? You want the drug cartel folks to vote? Why?

He has been involved in genealogy for more than 35 years. He
has worked in the computer industry for more than 40 years in hardware,
software, and managerial positions. By the early 1970s, Dick was already
using a mainframe computer to enter his family data on punch cards. He
built his first home computer in 1980.